Yep, I’m not making it up. In the two weeks since I last posted a blog I have managed to get just over halfway through step 1 of my intended 108+ steps to victory and final completion of The Killer and The Dead. I’m rethinking some of the steps. This is the rabbit hole folks. …
Author: rodericktmacdonald
Writer, pool player.
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The Writing Life: 108+ Steps from Victory (Or – Keyword Search Hell Awaits!)
You know, I really wanted to be done with The Killer and The Dead by now. I haven’t fallen victim to perfectionism, honest. What has happened is I have realized in the course of reading the book again, that in addition to making semi-final additions to the manuscript for clarity, plot, and theme advancement, and …
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The Writing Life: It’s just 30 minutes…
I’m tired. I’d rather go to bed, but I’ve bargained with myself and asked for thirty minutes of writing, just thirty minutes and then bed. See what I can produce now (Wednesday night) to make it easier to get my blog out on time tomorrow, after another long day. I realized yesterday that I have …
Why I Write Fantasy: To Explore the Meta
To be honest, in writing The Killer and The Dead I didn’t set out to explore aspects of metafiction, which I define as fiction that interrogates itself, and that can operate in a separate space in the reader’s mind beyond merely the ingestion and understanding of the narrative: it just kind of happened. In meta …
The Writing Life: Imagining Success
Hi there folks! I did finally finish my vocalization of The Killer and The Dead today, and many improvements have been made, and a mere thirty two notes to self generated. You know, changes, continuity checks, questions for proofers and beta readers, that kind of thing. I’m still a few steps away from hitting the …
Why I Write Fantasy: To try to Touch the Unknown.
The adventure of a blank page is the infinite possibilities it represents. Each word written at first narrows the choices left for those to follow, words determining their most likely successors, options being lost due to the rules of grammar, the syntax of language. But, after a time a magical thing can happen: the groups …
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The Writing Life : Speed Bumps
You get yourself a little momentum going. You think "Yeah, my voice is a little scratchy because I've beeen reading my book out loud, and some tricky parts of it repeatedly, for hours." Nope, you've got that seasonal cold thingy. A brain of snot. Dawesomb. It happens. That strange lightheaded inability to focus because no …
The Writing Life: Momentum
Another rapid freehand blog today. Which means five plus edits after publication - my apologies to those of you who get version one mailed to you! My face is hot. I think because I've been talking for hours. To myself. I've been reading The Killer and The Dead aloud, and I'm here to say (thankfully …
Why I Write Fantasy: Death and Freedom
I'm not publishing the blog I wrote earlier today. Didn't quite capture what I wanted to say. So instead I'm freehanding this one, not even a spellchecker to save me! I started writing fantasy, as I've said elsewhere, to create worlds of my own to escape into, after enjoyng the sensation of entering into other …
The Writing Life: Bandaid Ripped Off
So I finished all the primary adjustments to The Killer and The Dead today. Then I accepted all on every other change in the document made by my editor. (I have read them all in passing, but not focused on them as it is just too deep a rabbithole for me to fall down.) I'm …
Roderick T. Macdonald 